AWS Security Blog

Category: Advanced (300)

Isolating network access to your AWS Cloud9 environments

In this post, I show you how to create isolated AWS Cloud9 environments for your developers without requiring ingress (inbound) access from the internet. I also walk you through optional steps to further isolate your AWS Cloud9 environment by removing egress (outbound) access. Until recently, AWS Cloud9 required you to allow ingress Secure Shell (SSH) […]

How to add DNS filtering to your NAT instance with Squid

September 23, 2020: The squid configuration file in this blog post and associated YAML template have been updated. September 4, 2019: We’ve updated this blog post, initially published on January 26, 2016. Major changes include: support of Amazon Linux 2, no longer having to compile Squid 3.5, and a high availability version of the solution […]

On-Demand SCIM provisioning of Azure AD to AWS IAM Identity Center with PowerShell

June 6, 2023: We made minor updates to the section “Grant permission to the Graph API to access the Default Directory in Azure AD.” September 20, 2022: We updated the link to the GitHub repository. September 12, 2022: This blog post has been updated to reflect the new name of AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) – […]

Role-based access control using Amazon Cognito and an external identity provider

September 8, 2023: It’s important to know that if you activate user sign-up in your user pool, anyone on the internet can sign up for an account and sign in to your apps. Don’t enable self-registration in your user pool unless you want to open your app to allow users to sign up. Amazon Cognito […]

Integrating AWS CloudFormation security tests with AWS Security Hub and AWS CodeBuild reports

The concept of infrastructure as code, by using pipelines for continuous integration and delivery, is fundamental for the development of cloud infrastructure. Including code quality and vulnerability scans in the pipeline is essential for the security of this infrastructure as code. In one of our previous posts, How to build a CI/CD pipeline for container […]

How to import PFX-formatted certificates into AWS Certificate Manager using OpenSSL

In this blog post, we show you how to import PFX-formatted certificates into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) using OpenSSL tools. Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates are small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key pair to an organization’s details. The key pair is used to secure network communications and establish […]

How to use AWS Config to determine compliance of AWS KMS key policies to your specifications

August 31, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. One of the top security methodologies is the principle of least privilege, which is the […]

Automate Amazon Athena queries for PCI DSS log review using AWS Lambda

In this post, I will show you how to use AWS Lambda to automate PCI DSS (v3.2.1) evidence generation, and daily log review to assist with your ongoing PCI DSS activities. We will specifically be looking at AWS CloudTrail Logs stored centrally in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) (which is also a Well-Architected Security […]

Secure deployment of Amazon SageMaker resources

Amazon SageMaker, like other services in Amazon Web Services (AWS), includes security-related parameters and configurations that you can use to improve the security posture of resources as you deploy them. However, many of these security-related parameters are optional, allowing you to deploy resources without them. While this might be acceptable in the initial exploration stage, […]

Monitoring AWS Certificate Manager Private CA with AWS Security Hub

Certificates are a vital part of any security infrastructure because they allow a company’s internal or external facing products, like websites and devices, to be trusted. To deploy certificates successfully and at scale, you need to set up a certificate authority hierarchy that provisions and issues certificates. You also need to monitor this hierarchy closely, […]